Your WordPress site is your life. You are a serious blogger, an informal conversationist or a merchant purveyor of the finest something. Whichever the above category or whether there is another reason for your hard earned, newly learned WordPress site you must keep on top of the technology. WordPress is wonderful but not infallible. It has kinks in its armour and chinks in its chains. Below is a helpful list of the basic things that can trip up your online super world.

Plugins

These are the lifeblood of any website. They are what make the pages fly off the screen and move and groove and impress. They are also tricky and constantly get in each other’s and your way. The imposition of needing to update seemingly everything all the time will need to be factored into your regular usage. The problems arise mainly when updating occurs or there are too many plugins vying for the finite space within the operating functions. It gets more layered when one realises there is a plugin to help control plugins.

Some plugins are straight from doom. They are designed to mess you around or plant malicious software onto your platform. Some are just badly designed and incompatible with many other plugins. Full-Page Caching plugins are a further layer of plugin despondency for you the master of ceremonies. In conclusion for this segment, plugins are common and repeatedly annoy you, join them, you cannot beat them.

Hacking

Your beloved site is a cyber success. Readers from all over the world are feasting on the somethings you offer. But alas your site is a target for those who wish to steal and interrupt. Online outlaws with no other interest than your passwords and your visitor’s details. Your well-written prose helping to sell and inform is just sitting there waiting for vagabond types to infringe on. You may find yourself a victim of a plethora of nasties that infect you and all near you. This would be done for either profit or fun. Protect yourself for sure, a little effort now will save a lot of effort down the line.

Update compatibility

So, back to updates. The constant need to update and modernise your site and its functions will not go away. Unwanted hurdles are common. These hurdles are the result of old or now defunct plugins. Old being those non-updated or un-updateable plugins and the defunct being that the plugin designers have literally stopped and abandoned the plugin.

User Error

There are many reasons and many ways for your site to crash. It is both easy and hard to do this. There is or will be a time where your site crashes. Why and how to avoid it in the future is your priority. For example simply putting ONE incorrect character or command in your wp-config.php file can implode the system, this will be followed by panicked FAQ hunting and social collective forums on how to deal with it.

Crashing

To the end user, a crashed site will show a grey page with some tech writing and an error number. It also has a frowning face and empty spaces. This for the end user is a bye bye unless your site holds very specific information that certain people just need to get hold of, the end user or customer to you will just head back off to Mr Google and find another site with the same providence or products. This as a website owner makes your life miserable and for those in the merchant trade less profitable. It is, therefore, prudent to stay on top of your web hosting company and should your site crash have immediate access to customer service. Server crashes occur for a multitude of reasons; excessive data usage or malfunctioning hardware not to mention technicians imputing incorrect formatting on the server.

Minification

Yes, this is a real word. It stems from javascript and CSS and the removal of unnecessary symbols ie: semicolons or lines from CSS coding. Therefore minimising the file size which is beneficial to the smooth operation of the site. You may find automatic minification happens without your knowledge, this is something that can cause problems which require investigations and time-consuming repairs. Your site needs to run smoothly but you’re doing below the skin still needs some meat to it or it will flounder.

Online store plugins

This brings you to the reverse proxy realm. Problems that stem from this are by and large disruptive and makes the site look amateurish. This is a problem that can lead to the wrong page displayed and a potential customer gone, with no time for others mistakes Mr Google will once again help a rival merchant with a new customer.

The WordPress world is deep, even though it is also a usable and easy interface, underlying that ease is a very distinct and complex and fragile coding DNA that will not allow mistakes. Your WordPress adventure will delight you and surprise you, but you must accept its issues and learn to love its cracks and bends.

What or who is hacking you? It is important to start with exactly what has the ability to attack you. If you are using monetary payment systems you are more likely to be targeted, but all the same, your tiny little blog about pandas may also come under fire. Regardless of your web page function, you should always be on top of security.

Attack

Redirect – An illicit site using affiliate income could redirect visitors from your site. This is a wide net style attack and is worth it for the instant confusion and paying clicks it gets.

Resource – A takeover of your server could be used to send spam, service shutdown orders or many other attacks. This could lead to being placed on blacklists and even get you a hefty bill if you are on such a payment format.

Drive-by – An infection from hackers can install malware. This malware like ransomware, viruses, trackers can then capture information usable for illicit gain.

Protect

Firstly, use a good quality hosting service. Hosting sites are ten a penny these days, so it is imperative for you to have a high-quality hosting service. Most of the good ones will have security built into a package you have bought, be sure to investigate these services before signing up.

Your hosting service needs to perform regular scans for malware. It should also run up to date PHP and MySQL. You should inquire as to whether they offer WordPress optimisation and if the staff have an intrinsic knowledge of WordPress.

Backup

Backup services are another layer of protection. Services like Word Press Backup, Duplicator or Updraft Plus are the leading free backup providers. Others charge, but the cost is worth it considering the services they provide.

WordPress Plugins

Plug-ins are by far the easiest way for hackers to enter your domain. It accounts for over half of the hacks done on WordPress sites. Always keep an updated plug-in running at all times. Try to use software that alerts you when updating is needed. Plug-ins may be discarded by the author, this is an open invitation to a bot or hackers. Always check the author’s credentials and have them confirm the life expectancy of the plugin.

Two-factor

Two-factor authorisation is the new hot thing in cyber security. You may use this for banking, well it is now an intrinsic part of website security too. This is a brick wall for the brute force attacks. Adding to that you should set a username which is UNcommon. User names like ‘Admin’ are easy prey for the terror bots that continuously scan for such discrepancies. Whether you are running solo or in a team, you should have in place a security doctrine. One that encompasses strong passwords, the blocking of IPs that are not solo, and locking out users with too many password failures.

Follow these basic guidelines for a start to being protected, but as the World Wide Web is forever changing, you are advised to stay on top of both the attackers and the newest developments in defense.

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SSL for Beginners: All You Need to Know in Making Your Website More Secure

You have probably browsed through thousands of websites all your life while barely even noticing something as little as that http:// or https:// preceding each site name, haven’t you? Well, I mean now you might be wondering, “Oh yeah? I see that every time but I mean, why is these two different though? Like what’s with the s and non-s?” Well, let me tell you something fascinating: that little “s” is security.

Making it simple for your initial understanding, that little s certifies that your connection with a website you are visiting is private so hackers will not be able to capture any of your data. The technology that makes this possible is called SSL, which means Secure Sockets Layer. Most websites that use this are those that require you to give sensitive information like when you pay bills online. Now, that is interesting!

And to make it more interesting for you, I will lay down everything you need to know about SSL, how to start getting it for your own website.

THE BASICS OF SSL

SSL is your customary technology that caters security by forming a private link applicable only to a web server and a browser that safeguards all information transmitted by one to another and vice versa.

First, security. SSL offers its users the protection they need to ensure that all their private information will not be tampered by prying hackers and thus, prevents this information from being stolen.

Imagine when you’re about to dig in the last piece of your favorite pizza but right on that moment, your friend decided to be a bummer and get it all in one mouthful! You lost it all at once! This is what will happen without the SSL technology. The hackers can get anything from details of your recent purchases to your billing information; from the lowest to elite information! This might risk not just your privacy but also your financials, for that matter.

Have you heard of “man-in-the-middle” attack? The whole scenario will start as prying individual places a tiny, concealed program that listens on the server hosting a website. This program would queue in the background until a user starts entering information that would trigger the program to start capturing the data and then direct it back to the hacker.

That would be fairly easy for hackers to do and this is when SSL becomes valuable. Through SSL, your browser will form a connection with the server by looking at the SSL certificate. What happens is that the browser will secure that only you and the website you are submitting the information to can access whatever you provide into your browser.

There is no requisite to do this. Once you access a website with SSL, the connection happens instantly!

HOW CAN I ENSURE THAT A WEBSITE HAS SSL? (Especially if I am about to divulge very sensitive information on that website?)

Worry not, my friends! It is really good that you have stayed through this post and now you’re about to add something worthwhile in your knowledge potluck!

The URL says https://

We have started on this. From now on, you will not ignore that extra consonant on the website URLs because you finally know what it means!

It has to appear like this:

There’s a padlock icon in the URL bar.

Look back on the image above, you see that padlock beside Dropbox, Inc (US)? Depending on your browser, it can be either at the left or right side of the URL bar. When you hover and click on that icon, you will be provided with details about the certificate that will be useful to you.

The certificate is valid.

Given the preceding criteria, you might think that is all that you need to find on the website. However, like how a fresh-looking milk might have gone bad, you still have to make sure it hasn’t expired yet. To find out whether the certificate is still valid, click on the padlock icon and afterwards, click “View certificates”.

This would prompt you to the Certificate Dialog Box, wherein you can view the details such as the validity of the certificate.

Given that it is still 2016, the certificate is still valid and thus, you can be assured that the information you enter on this site is still secured.

HOW TO SECURE AN SSL CERTIFICATE FOR MY WEBSITE?

What you need to secure first is the type of certificate you might need for your website. Well, there are different types, depending on your need.

There are various authorities that offer particular sort of certificates depending on how your site is configured. Consider the quantity of certificates you might need and which domains you need to secure. Since a site has multiple links, from your blog proper to your landing page, you may have to consider which among these you should secure.

After considering the number and type of certificate, you go forward in assessing the validity of the certification. There are standard SSL certificates which are valid for one to two years. However, if this appears too short for you and you are looking for a longer-term alternative, just dig into other certificates that offer longer validity periods.

BENEFICIAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR SEO

There have been many concerns on switching from http:// to https://; however, it has been told that Google has long been urging websites to switch on that as it is safe to do so.

Aside from this encouragement from Google, there are basically a lot of SEO benefits on using the SSL technology that we would not divulge much into. Nevertheless, to give you a glimpse of what those are, we have:

Privacy and Security

Preservation of Referrer Data

Upturn in Rankings

Did you learn a lot from this article? These are all just the basic things you need to know regarding SSL yet are the most useful ones!